Installation problems

Some users have reported that PopTools does not install properly on their
computers. Usually they get an error message that says "Compile error in
hidden module ... etc ". This error occurs when Excel cannot find the
object libraries it needs to compile the VBA components of PopTools. Here are
some suggested remedies.

1. PopTools is only available as an English language version. In
general, this does not seem to cause problems, but on some systems PopTools may
not be able to establish a reference to SOLVER. If SOLVER is present on your
system but has a name other than SOLVER.XLA you might need to obtain a copy of
the English version of the SOLVER.XLA file (at least one user reported success
using this strategy).

2. It is also possible that this error occurs because the file
RANDEVS.DLL has not been copied to the system directory during the installation
process. This could occur if you are not an administrator on an NT machine. If
RANDEVS.DLL is not in the system (SYSTEM32) directory, please download
RANDEVS.DLL from here, and get an
administrator to put it in the SYSTEM32 directory for you.

3. It is also possible that the object libraries such as REFEDIT.DLL
or SOLVER are in unusual locations. As far as I can tell, the
problem is caused when a new version of Excel has been installed, and old
versions of SOLVER.XLA or REFEDIT.DLL have not been removed. To remedy the problem, you need to make Excel aware of the location of these
files. You might be able to make Excel recognise the location of these libraries
by using them through the VBA editor, as follows:

Open Excel and press ALT-F11. This will open the Visual Basic editor, which
looks like this:

Choose a VBA project from the left hand panel [VBAProject (Book2) is selected
above]. Then choose TOOLS/REFERENCES. This will open a dialog box like that
shown below:

Browse to find "SOLVER" and "Ref Edit Control". Make sure
that they are both ticked and then close the dialog box.

Once you have done all this, Excel ought to know the location of these libraries,
and should be able to compile PopTools. You can test SOLVER by trying to open
the SOLVER dialog.